johnson 115 hp questions

[zacc]

hello every one i am new and have a few questions . i have a 1990 115 vro johnson it good condition good compression. it seems hard to start when cold is this an issue with this model? also what sort of rpm should it do a wide open throttle ? thank you

[STUIE63]

I had a friend with a johnson of about the same age and it wouldn't start for him and started perfectly whenever he took it into the mechanics to get it looked at . turned out the problem was he wasn't pushing in the key and using the choke and mechanic knew about this and was . maybe try this .
Stuie

[GBC]

I had one of those beasts ('97 115 ocean runner) a few motors back.

Had to choke it and start turning it over while gently lifting the warm up lever until it fired.

It was reliable enough once you got the cold start thang down.

[BM]

Zacc,

your enginer is fitted wth an "enrichener" in place of a choke. To start one of these engines:

1) raise warm up lever approx halfway

2) turn key ot on position and push key in and hold it pushed in for 10 seconds

3) let key out and then crank engine

4) once it fires work the rpm with the warm up lever so it neither screams or stalls.

5) If it stalls crank with the warm up lever still raised but don't prime it. If it doesn't fire in a couple of seconds then reprime with the key and crank again

You will get the hang of it.

Max rpm around 5500. A bit higher won't hurt it but you don't want to be doing 5000rpm at full throttle. That is dangerous to the engine. Regular unleaded is fine or you can use premium unleaded also.

The reason th ekey needs to be pushed and held is because it is operating a solenoid which is draining a small amount of fuel from a carb into the crankcase to give a rich mixture for startup. Older engines had simple butterfly valves that closed over the air intakes of the carbs which forced the engine to such more fuel on startup. So same end result, just a different method of achieving it.

Cheers